


Gorgon

by dornishsphinx



Category: Fire Emblem Echoes: Mou Hitori no Eiyuu Ou | Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia
Genre: Alternate Universe - Rinea Lives, F/F, Gothic Romance, Pre-Femslash, Valentia Accordion Compliant, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2020-01-05
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:21:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22136974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dornishsphinx/pseuds/dornishsphinx
Summary: Sonya’s search for a cure for women turned into witches took her across the land. Her trail ended in a remote region, after which she was never seen again. Rumours fly, however, that shortly thereafter a new witch took up residence in Nuibaba’s abode on Fear Mountain.And that witch, in Sonya’s opinion, even if her expression is made from flame and what is left of a dead god’s power, has a pretty face.
Relationships: Rinea/Sonya (Fire Emblem)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 24
Collections: Fire Emblem Rare Pair Christmas Exchange 2019





	Gorgon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Solrosfalt](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Solrosfalt/gifts).



> Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year, Solrosfalt! this got a little more pre-relationship than originally intended, but I hope you enjoy!

“You shouldn’t go up there. There’s a witch on Fear Mountain. It’s even worse in the shrine if you go deep enough.”

Sonya, travelling bag across her back and sword returned to her, raised a perfect eyebrow.

“A witch on Fear Mountain. You don’t say. I thought the Deliverance killed her months ago.”

The blacksmith wiped sweat from her brow before shaking her head.

“Not her. A new one. My niece went up the mountain to pluck the herbs that grow there—she’s lucky she’s plain in the face, Nuibaba had plenty of opportunity to feed her to her monsters, the lack of sense she has—and when she did, it was there. On fire, floating in the air, big blank holes where its eyes should be. Must have burnt most of the grasses around there, so hopefully the little idiot won’t be going back up any time soon.”

Sonya was getting the impression this one liked the sound of her own voice, but since that was more useful than someone too taciturn, she supposed she couldn’t complain. It wasn’t as though she was particularly the silent type herself, especially now she was travelling on her own. Some weeks, her own voice was the only one she heard.

“I suppose she made a lucky escape.” Especially given that apparently this witch of hers hadn’t warped over and ripped her throat out. It seemed that the girl had found a pacifistic witch, or perhaps one even more empty than the usual kind. “Fire and floating. A Vestal, perhaps?”

The blacksmith shrugged her thick, muscled shoulders.

“It’s a witch, what does it matter the kind? There’s danger up there, even if Nuibaba is gone. You shouldn’t venture too far.”

Sonya smiled.

“Thank you for the warning, but—” She tapped the blade with her gloved knuckles, for emphasis— “I should be able to handle myself.”

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

\--

When she’d fought Duma, beset by mogalls and stone gargoyles on all sides and trying not to think about the empty bodies of her sisters being trampled over by an army that fought for the continent’s future, there had been no time to consider things beyond her immediate field of vision which weren’t Jedah or the god to whom he’d sacrificed those a father ought to protect rather than use for his own gain.

There was more opportunity to look around and reflect now, completely alone, as the darkening twilight set in around Nuibaba’s abode.

“So, this is the place.”

She looked up at the grey, oppressive walls and then forward, at the stark row of columns. They were a little like teeth in the maw of some great, stone beast, she mused, and found herself wondering just how many young women they had devoured over the years as she walked into it herself. The entrance hall was no less overbearing: in the light just barely coming through a row of windows on the west wall, she could make out carpets down a stairway, shelves of tomes, all neatly stacked and dustier than a crypt, and an unlit chandelier that looked near to falling off its hinges. And there were an eyebrow-raising number of cauldrons stacked around.

“Can’t say it’s something much worth guarding, Marla. How many cauldrons blew up in the face of the fearsome Nuibaba for her to need so many backups, I wonder?”

It wasn’t like there was an answer coming, of course. Marla was long dead, and longer gone from this dreary place. She looked up the stairs curiously, and, striking a lantern, held it up to make her way into the blackness above. Each door creaked as she pushed it open, one hand raised to strike at any creatures lurking within, but the only living things she came across were a double-sealed jar of purple, writhing insects in what seemed to be a study. The light from her lantern reflected on their shiny carapaces, and on a number of crystal balls littered around the room. The number of them made her uneasy. It felt like being watched by dozens of blank eyes.

Had Nuibaba been afraid of cracking these too? She allowed herself another chuckle to fend of the uneasiness enveloping her, like the dark around.

“So very careful, but that didn’t save you from what was coming to you. All those poor young women you killed for your own beauty. How depraved.”

She lowered the lantern, moving around to the other side of the table, only to stop in her tracks. Slowly, carefully, she snuffed her own light out. The odd sense of not being alone any longer proved right when a faint light remained, filtering in through the doorframe. She crept over, silent as she could, though she cursed as her heels clacked against a moth-eaten hole in the carpet. No chance for a surprise attack then; she threw the door open, her other hand raised to strike. Something was knocked to the side: a slim, fiery figure with blank eyes. Even as slim and small as it was, it made for an easier target than any lumbering knight in bulky armour, glowing as it did in the pitch-black.

“Well, now, I was right. A Vestal. Such a rarity, I’m almost flattered—”

The Vestal’s arms came up, and Sonya raised her own sharply, shining, pale patterns circling in the air, illuminating her pale arms and the sharp lines of her face. But those flickering arms stayed where they were, like she was a girl cowering from a hideous creature rather than the creature herself.

Sonya blinked, and straightened. The light faded from her hands, and once again, she disappeared from sight, only the furthest grasp of the Vestal’s light catching onto her cloak and making her sword glow with an orange light.

“All right, all right. I won’t hurt you as long as you don’t hurt me. But don’t think I’m soft-hearted. This is just… a favour. That I couldn’t repay to the right recipients.”

The Vestal’s arms stayed where they were, and curled over her head. It was almost as though she was cowering, though witches didn’t have the capacity for understanding danger until the moment they were struck down and some lucidity and fear came back into their eyes. Sonya sighed, and let herself fall into a true relaxed stance rather than the false one she’d prepared.

“Believe me or not. It’s all the same to me.”

With that, she restruck her lantern and swayed past the spectre onto the next door. Her cloak nearly brushed against the flames in her attempt to appear calm and composed. Here and there, she caught little flickers against the shadows, separate from the ebb of her lantern; the witch following her around, no doubt, though, oddly, it didn’t seem like she wanted to attack. When she came back down the stairs to scour the rest of the books, the Vestal already seemed to have lost interest, floating instead around the ceiling of the lower floor. She swirled around the chandelier, then did so again with one finger outstretched. The candles lit up, one by one, illuminating the room and the rich red velvets with black marks burnt into them, as a footpath formed from being trailed hundreds of times.

“My, how kind of you,” she murmured, though her attention had been dragged far away from the books now. “I suppose there’s little chance of a witch being scared of children’s stories when you don’t even remember your own self. But why do you stay in dismal places like these, I wonder?”

She didn’t intend to be overheard. It wasn’t even a question for the Vestal herself, but rather musings on her kind in general. Even so, a hoarse voice floated down towards her from the ceiling, like the Vestal didn’t know how to descend herself.

“He smashed her mirror, it’s why… it must be why… he always hated them, and bade me not go near… so why else would…?”

Sonya squinted up at her. After the darkness engulfing this house, nothing but the weak orange light of the lantern to barely reveal its corners, the Vestal and her chandelier were bright as the sun.

She could understand words, like Marla, like Hestia, but like them, she was still nothing but the hollow shell of whatever woman she used to be. The only witch she’d ever come across with a full sense of self had been Nuibaba, as cruel as she was, and her power had been Medusa’s, not the Father’s. This one was just like a restless ghost from one of the stories that came out of this mountain now that she wasn’t subservient to the Faithful; one last memory, one last unfinished task to complete, and nothing else of her left.

“I see,” she said.

Her gaze moved back to the wall of shelves, bringing her lantern over across them to read the more faded titles the chandelier’s light couldn’t quite reach. Some were written in alphabets she didn’t even recognise, and others' lettering had faded away entirely.

By the time her eyes were burning from tiredness, and she was on the brink of collapse, it seemed like every candle in the house was burning along with them, like little orange flowers appearing in the dark earth.

\--

Nuibaba had collected almost as many books and tomes as victims she had claimed, and it took days to sort through all her shelves, the hidden and the open, but eventually, she struck on some things of interest. One tome in particular sparked her interest, full of names and summoning rituals: Stheno, Euryale, Medusa; Aegle, Arethusa, Hespera; Deino, Enyo, Pemphedro—the names went on and on, page after page after page, each ready to take some sacrifice and grant something in return, be it power, strength, love, fortune, luck, healing, or a myriad other things someone might sell their soul for; but the one that interested her the most had a taste for scavenging souls, and would sell them on for an equivalent price.

She paused on that line, eyes fixed and bound to it, and only managed to drag them away when she caught the Vestal drifting into the room. She swayed around aimlessly, as if to a music that didn’t exist; each sweep left behind a trace of fire for a moment, like the hem of a skirt in a dance.

“You’re very helpful,” she mused, with a long drawl, lidded eyes and half a smile under her fist. “Why _do_ you hang around? Not that I’m complaining about getting to save on flint and matchsticks.”

The Vestal looked down at her, with those big, blank eyes, and Sonya chuckled, leaning back in her chair, tilting her head back to look straight back at her.

“Yes, I can talk as well as eat these tasteless provisions and read. Had you forgotten already?”

The witch twisted around in the air, fast and nimble, as though the air was water and she, some seal able to wrap itself into knots. She remained at bay for a few moments more before descending, closer and closer and curiouser.

Sonya smiled, and raised an eyebrow

“Wondering if I’ll flinch at the heat, I take it?”

In one long, lithe movement, she brought a hand up. Her fingers were relaxed and curled, and her cape followed, like a garuda’s wing readying itself for flight. No matter how close it came to the Vestal’s fire, her face and smile remained exactly the same, even as the metal fastener began to feel warm through her glove, even as the heat reached the twin grimoire rings hidden beneath.

The Vestal swayed in the air, watching, and Sonya found herself studying the fiery face in return and wondering about the true name and face of the woman this hollow thing had been born from. There was no way of knowing where her soul was, now that Duma was dead, but she imagined she’d been pretty, at least from the vague shapes to which the flames clung.

In the end, it was the Vestal who detached from her and floated away. For the rest of the night, Sonya felt oddly cold.

\--

She grew used to the witch without meaning to: the winding trails of black curling around the manse’s dusty carpets; a quiet presence and light at her back while she ate or studied the rest of Nuibaba’s library. It wasn’t as though she made herself a nuisance, staying away from all easily-combustible tomes and magical tools as though they’d burn her and not the opposite, and even if she was a hollow creature without a soul or true thought, having her around staved off the isolation of this place.

It was a surprise then, when one day she heard agitation behind her, and turned to see the witch smacking the sword she’d taken out for polishing onto the floor and, as a consequence, setting the table on which it had been sitting ablaze with flame.

“What are you—!”

When she’d managed to contain the fire, she looked up to see an odd fear that ought not have existed on a witch’s face mixed in with something else. Where her brows should have been—or perhaps where they were, just made of fire and impossible to distinguish—furrowed in disgust. Her voice was colder when it next came out, and stronger than the whisper it had been until now, and Sonya got the sudden impression that the fiery spectre she’d been dealing with until now had regained a little of itself that she hadn’t even realised was missing.

“Such a horrible thing. Only used for bloodshed.” 

“It’s rude to call a woman’s taste horrible, you know,” she said, keeping her face composed with a touch of light amusement while tensing inwardly as the flames around the witch grew more frenetic.

It was probably a bad idea, given the witch’s normal timidity had transformed into something else, but she picked the sword up from where it had clattered on the floor and considered where to stash it. It would be fine, surely. Her main arsenal came from her own blood after all.

A quick trip down to the dungeons and back up, and the energy vanished from her as though it had never been there; the shaking and the strength of her voice dissipating into quiet and vacancy as though they’d never changed. She should have been pleased, but as the witch drifted away like a boat unmoored, she couldn’t help but feel a sense of loss. It was stupid, given nothing had changed in the first place. Her anger and harsh words had never been the sign of a soul returning, just some old fear turned to instinct.

She chastised herself for her own foolishness, and continued with her task.

\--

One did not have to be willing to be sacrificed, but on occasion, she couldn’t help but remember the way Jedah had spoken, as though Marla and Hestia were happy with their soulless fates. No doubt it was all more of his manipulations. That monster had been very good at convincing people of what their duty was. He’d even done it to the little princess, somehow.

Her sisters had always seemed so strong, always had been strong and solid figures. His mockery had all been lies and misdirection, but as the days passed and the wind started to sound more and more like her name being whispered, her sisters, wherever they were, chastising her for the lack of progress in the impossible task she’d set herself, because as the books had shown, it wasn’t quite as impossible as it had seemed.

She just refused to pay such a heavy price for only such a small part of her ambition to be fulfilled, and leaving the rest of witchkind to rot and be hacked away at by the terrified subjects of a new crown, but their rings felt heavy and cold on her fingers.

“You know, when I was travelling with Her Majesty,” she said, trying to drown out the whistling through the stones, “There were two sisters who came to save their youngest, who had been kidnapped. I was the one holding her captive in fact. Quite the troublemaker for the two of them. She was so very convinced they’d come for her. I didn’t really say anything, but… I kept my distance just a bit. They kept theirs too, and didn’t really question it, given I’d been one of her captors.” She laughed, low and soft. “I never thought myself an envious woman.”

“You travelled with… Her Majesty?”

The Vestal’s tongue tripped over the title oddly.

Sonya laughed, light, a hand coming delicately and deliberately to her mouth.

“I did. And I even called her Celica.”

The Vestal considered that. “Celica.” It was like she was tasting how it sounded in her mouth. “The Empress… is Celica.”

Well, the Empress was technically _Anthiese_ , and the Empress was the Queen of a far larger kingdom than just Rigel, but it wasn’t as though this one was ever going to get far enough in social situations, at least ones not not involving swords and arrows bearing down on her, to make a social blunder.

“The Empress is Celica,” Sonya agreed. “I wonder if she has grown into her beauty, now. It’s been a long time.”

“And what do you call me?”

Sonya blinked, and tilted her head back over to the Vestal. “Nothing, as a matter of fact. You’ve never given me any name to call you.”

“Oh,” said the witch, but didn’t give a name. Perhaps she’d forgotten it. After all, she was the old, powerful kind of witch: a sacrificed priestess who’d thrown herself to Duma’s eternal fire in an era gone by. “And beauty… is that really important to you?”

“Of course. The world loses out if pretty women aren’t allowed to show themselves off, locked away in places like this.” 

“…Yet… you kept a young girl captive?”

Sonya opened her mouth, and closed it again.

“Envious _and_ a hypocrite.” She smiled, wryly. “What a mess of a woman I am. But at least I look put-together, wouldn’t you say?”

She ran her own fingers through her hair and out the other end, letting the long strands fall where they would, a self-deprecating smirk playing around her red lips.

For a moment, Sonya wondered if one of the flickers around the witch’s mouth was an answering smile.

\--

The flowers withered and caught fire under her touch, and the birds scattered in alarm, loud cries echoing across the mountainside. Sonya’s heel clacked on stone as she came out from behind one of the columns and watched the pitiful display, but the Vestal didn’t seem to notice, her arm still outstretched, like she was confused.

“If you set the whole mountain on fire and I choke to death on smoke, I won’t be pleased, you know. I’ll be half-ash, half-rot by the time someone finds me, and when I’m buried, I don’t want my casket to be closed.” 

The Vestal still didn’t seem to hear, trying to pick at another flower, this one as gold as the trim of Sonya’s cloak. Inevitably as sunrise, it burst into flames too.

“My goodness,” she said, with an exasperated sigh, and formed a flower from fire in her own hand before sending it floating over. The witch twisted around in the air, grasping and examining it, before looking at her. Even with her blank eyes and fiery face, Sonya thought she could recognise a quizzical look on her face.

“You’ll set everything on fire,” she said. “Come now, isn’t that one just as pretty as the real thing? I worked hard to get the petals right.”

The witch traced the petals, and then looked out over the mountain.

“I don’t want to remember,” said the witch. “But… feeling… and feelings… I don’t want them to be such a distant memory. I don’t like what I am…”

Sonya’s eyes widened.

“You…”

She couldn’t help but remember Marla, in the end: remembering herself, regretting. She’d thought it was just a soul returning to her upon death, but was it possible that there was still something left of the woman a witch had been inside, a little piece of the soul clinging to the body as the rest of it was ripped away?

Perhaps, even if in the end all her desperate searching failed, one person saved would be enough, if it was one that she—ah. How sentimental of her. She laughed at herself, wry and accepting, before coming over to stand before her. Where she hadn’t seemed to recognise the cries of birds, or the setting of flames, the Vestal’s head turned at hearing the clacks of her shoes.

“I’ll return your soul to you, one of these days,” she said, her voice resolute, before she let brought a coy hand to her mouth. “And when you get it back, you can tell me your name in exchange, and we can have a proper conversation, finally. How does that sound?”

Ah. That was a smile, indeed.

**Author's Note:**

> (Me: "let's not bring in needless Greek mythology this time, since I did that for the last exchange." Game: -involves Medusa heavily with witches, has triads of sisters and grieving them be important elements with Sonya- Me: "next exchange, let's not bring in Greek mythology.")


End file.
